BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

There are always people biking on Fifth/Forbes. Make conversation and tag along through intersections. This happens to me from time to time, and I don't mind it.

My usual route from the Strip (avoiding Polish Hill) is Liberty -(right)-> Millvale -(right)-> Center -(left)-> Neville -(right)-> 5th.. then just take the lane on 5th.. make your way through central Oakland down Bates, or stay on 5th to Birmingham Bridge, depending on where in the South Side you are going. Not sure this is any faster than heading through downtown, but if you need to go through Oakland, thats how I would do it. I don't use any sidewalks or crosswalks. Most of these roads are wide enough for cars to pass, or they are low traffic enough where you don't need to worry about it.

Ditto. If you find fifth frightening, you can do something with bayard and bigelow across fifth, across forbes, to r.clemente drive and thence to bates. But frankly, I think fifth is safer.

I also found the point where all the neighborhoods converge kind of confusing. One second I was in shadyside, then East Liberty (thinking, "I should probably not be in E Lib if I don't know my way around"), and a block later I was in oakland. Mind=blown.

I've never really had a problem taking the lane on Fifth (though, I don't know how fast/slow you are).

then East Liberty (thinking, "I should probably not be in E Lib if I don't know my way around")

Quite frankly, if it's daylight, you're probably not going to have a problem and even at night I would say that the main arteries are OK. The problem areas are bordered/surrounded by East Liberty Blvd., Negley, Black St., Hays, and Highland Ave region. I would have cut it off at St. Clair St. except for that incident last week.

I like the route dwillen layed out. In the daytime, though, you can also keep heading down Neville...it turns into Boundary as it drops down between CMU and the Museums, and ends up leading you to the Panther Hollow Trail entrance. The first time it can be a little weird figuring out how to get from the Panther Hollow Trail onto the Jail Trail, but it is do-able. Panther Hollow is dark at night. In the day, its a gorgeous little valley to bike through.

Approaching Oakland from the north (i.e., the Strip), remember that Craig is what splits off of Bigelow Blvd after the Bloomfield Bridge, and once you get to Centre, a L and a R puts you on Neville. As Pseudacris said, once you're on Neville, you can slide right past Oakland if you're on your way to SSide.

Any of the bigger streets can be a bit daunting if you're not used to the traffic, but I've not had any serious problems taking the lane on any of the aforementioned streets.

I've been bike commuting into Oakland since July, and Fifth between about Wilkins and Penn still scares the hell out of me. (Maybe that's more Shadyside, I guess...)

Some wiseacre tries to pass with less than 3' clearance at least once a week. I'm starting to consider carrying my U lock in my left hand.

I guess I should have clarified. I think fifth between craig and craft can be safer than bayard or centre if you're willing to take the right lane, stay in the center or left of it, and wait behind buses. There are a lot more lanes than there are cars, and the speeds are almost always below 35.

But I have to be honest -- I've been riding in the east end as long as anyone, and I still find fifth outbound from morewood to be unpleasant and somewhat intimidating, especially at certain times of day. I usually find a different route if I have the time. There are parallel streets through shadyside that are slower but somewhat less stressful.

I would never take that stretch of Fifth when there's a perfectly good Ellsworth Ave from Neville to Shady... left on Shady, take Penn a few blocks to where it intersects Fifth. Penn kind of sucks but overall it's better than braving Highway 5

@jamesk: Check out Kentucky or Howe for that section of road. sooooo much better

==everyone; I would never take 5th for that stretch. I'd take Howe or Ellsworth depending on where I'm heading and what time of day.

So, some pros and cons.

Howe/Kentucky

Pro: slowest traffic.

Con: lots of on-street parking. Lots of stop signs. Cars park right up to the corner, obscuring visibility.

Pro/Con: road too narrow to share. This is either a pro or a con depending on the cyclist

Ellsworth

Pro: new pavement, little on-street parking west of Negley. Fewer stop signs? Not positive but I think so.

Con: faster traffic -- though not unreasonably so.

Pro/Con: lane is shareable, though you do have to occasionally merge left around a parked car

Fifth

Pro: fastest, most direct route. Can frequently be ridden with no stops.

Con: aggressive drivers

Pro/Con: lane is not shareable, so you must ride well into it.

Con: road surface is like a moonscape right now. Patched, to be sure, but still you have to dodge the patches if you're not riding a 50lb balloon-tired behemoth.

Thanks, everyone, I'll have to get out that way next summer (I tend to only ride where I have to in the winter), in the mean time, there's still a month or two where I could try again, and I should start paying attention when I ride the bus through town.

Back in the spring, I took a day to ride from south side to the strip via the same route the 54c took, and it was actually much easier than yesterday was. I'm not sure if it was because the traffic was lighter that day (it was a sunday afternoon, and there was a marathon that day so there were a lot of road closures), or if I was just having a better day.

Pseudacris and Dwillen outlined my accidental and now favorite way to get from Oakland/Squi'll to Lawrencevill/Strip. I've even done the loop, ARB->Butler->Grant->Jailtrail (could be ok outbound, I've never done it in reverse)->PHT->Neville->streets Dwillen said, but I almost always include the cemetary because it's too pretty to skip. Punctuality is not my priority on these rides, though.

But I grew up on the edge of Squi'll/Oakland/Shadyside, and those areas were my stomping grounds on foot, so I'm never worried about getting lost there. S. Aiken alway startles me, though, I never expect it to be where it is. Bayard is never as helpful a street as it looks, by the same token, neither is Amberson. Millvale is 100% more helpful than it looked to me at first.

Shy of wandering as a drunken college student through the area for 3 years, Googlemaps is your friend.

For the other way, Oakland to the Strip, I usually take Melwood -> Denver -> Gold Way and bomb down Herron. Not so fun going up Herron though, thus the Millvale-Center-Neville wiggle.

Lyle, I mostly agree with you, especially about Fifth's road surface being like a moonscape. It's awful -- if I go that route I cut up Wilkins as soon as I can.

Ellsworth's surface is nice between Neville and Negley, but east of Negley it gets pretty moonish. I'd love to see some sharrows on Ellsworth. And maybe some signage, east of Negley, discouraging PAT drivers from implicit threats to our lives.

"Shy of wandering as a drunken college student through the area for 3 years,..."

3, 5, 10, whatever it takes.

For the other way, Oakland to the Strip, I usually take Melwood -> Denver -> Gold Way and bomb down Herron.

My usual route is Herron for 100 ft, left on Dobson, then right on Brereton. Not as twisty-windy and the turn onto the 28th st bridge is a bitch, but you can avoid Liberty altogether were that a concern

@lyle - you left off walnut which i think is actually the best option in a lot of cases. not much traffic and having lights at negley, highland & shady gives me some peace of mind when crossing.

ps: melwood/gold way rules!

Melwood/Gold Way is one of my favorite rides in all of Pittsburgh. One moment you're bouncing off of SUV bumpers on the Baum Memorial Expressway, next moment you're in the wilderness beneath the Bloomfield Skyway.

Melwood/Gold Way.

You mean The Bat Cave?

@salty - yeah, you're right. I almost never ride on walnut (except between Highland and Shady), so I just forgot about it. Not sure why I don't like Walnut. I think it's the high-turnover on-street parking. Lots of opportunities to get doored or nailed by somebody pulling out of a parking space, or stopping suddenly for one, or something. In fact, I seem to recall somebody on these boards had a run-in with a meatpacker using his company truck for a personal night out on Walnut.

Bat Cave?

From the Batman movie...its a nickname for that stretch of road from some of the people who live in Polish Hill & use that road as their main exit/entrance to the neighborhood.

Didn't know it was the local term for that stretch. Totally appropriate though, if you mean the 1960s Batman movie/series. They really are similar.

Not sure how widespread it is. Funny, though.

I guess it's a personal preference thing. I live in Shadyside, and I hate biking on Walnut. Where the stores are between Ivy and Aiken, too many pedestrians just step off the kerbs without looking. I suspect they're listening for approaching cars. Fortunately, there's very few electrics around here. Once past South Negley, the drivers seem to think that the stop signs are all optional.

At night, there's a lot of drunks on Walnut. One night, when I was walking the dog there were two PWSA guys doing some emergency work at College and Walnut. This was around midnight. It was dark, but they had big work lights set up, and they were wearing reflective vests. This drunk woman came racing up Walnut, blew through the stop sign on the other side of the intersection, and then barely stopped before hitting them. They were working about five feet from the edge of the intersection, so they were super visible. She screams "get out of the road" at them out the window, then stamps the gas and pulls around them. They were visibly shaken. I just wish I'd gotten the plate # for them.

I could tell you a million stories like that. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, there's all kinds of trash, especially beer bottles and beer cans everywhere on the side streets. Gotta watch out for broken glass. Check out the grass strips on the road edge of the sidewalks. Everywhere you look, you'll see old or new tire gouges. Some of that is from people who can't park, but an awful lot of them seem to appear on weekend mornings.

That stretch of Walnut is like the richer, smaller brother of Southside. Yeah no thanks. I'll stick to Ellsworth

I mainly meant Walnut east of Negley, which is almost as quiet as Howe/Kentucky but the lights save you from having to dodge traffic to cross Highland and Shady.

Although, if I'm going between Negley and Aiken, I usually take Walnut too (unless I'm already on 5th or Ellsworth).

There are drunks on *all* the roads at night.

FWIW, one thing that irks me is that both those roads between Aiken and Amberson are one way the same way... special rules for rich people.

@ salty FWIW, one thing that irks me is that both those roads between Aiken and Amberson are one way the same way... special rules for rich people.

There was originally going to be a stop on the busway at Amberson street, serving the people that work live and work along Baum and Center, the people that live in Friendship and Bloomfield and that weathly neighborhood ( Pittsburgh's old money, Scaifes, Hillmans and Mellons, the smallest of the constituancies). Well... The rich folks decided that they didn't want poor people wandering through their neighborhood.

So now, there is no busway stop between Negley Avenue and Herron hill. According to Wiki, that's 2.2 miles.

How much does that lessen the value of the busway?

IMO, a far more egregious denial of services than the prevention of the Walnut street clientele driving through their streets.

James 2:6 "Is it not the rich that oppress you?"

The Shadyside Station for the Pennsylvania Railroad was at Amberson Avenue.

Mick - I didn't know about the Amberson station in the original plan. I read a study (circa 2003) about the feasibility of adding a busway station around the Baum or Centre Bridges. It concluded that such a station would be used, but that the construction cost would be high, and they would have to devise a way to get people up the huge vertical drop from the busway level to the bridge level. And also that it is very close to the Negley Avenue station.

There is also the Neville Street ramp of the busway, which serves as a stop for some routes. The distance from Centre at Neville to Centre at Negley is a mile. Plus, there are very frequent non-busway buses in that area.

There's a walkway from Amberson up to Center. Owned by an apartment building, but I imagine they could find a work around. Or do nothing. There aren't amny "No Trespassing" signs there (or there weren't the last time I went through).

Neville? Well that is nice and it has access to the busway, but it isn't on the busway.

The non-busway buses in the area take considerably more than 10 minutes to get downtown - or to get to Wilkinsburg.

I knew the busway project proposal as the "Shadyside Hospital stop". As I understood it, the real problem was a lack of horizontal space. By the time there is enough width to put a busway stop anywhere around there, between Centre and Baum, you're some distance from the clientele you want to serve, both horizontally and vertically.

The logic was that Negley is only a 5-maybe-10-minute walk from Shadyside Hospital and/or Amberson, so it wasn't worth the trouble to add another, difficult-to-install station so close to Negley.

Do you have a Bike Pittsburgh bike map? I keep one in my bag & plan out some side streets when I'm going through a new route. Forbes and Fifth are just crazy but there are plenty of side streets that don't suck.

I really dislike Bayard between Neville and Dithridge. It's uphill with plenty of parked cars, potholes and impatient drivers. Fifth is preferable.

I really dislike Bayard between Neville and Dithridge. It's uphill with plenty of parked cars, potholes and impatient drivers. Fifth is preferable.

Fifth between Neville and Bellefield is not really any better on the potholes, and has many more impatient drivers. Fewer parked cars, but not by many. For my money, Bayard is a lot quieter at most times of day if that's what you're going for.